What Moves The Dead

I just finished T. Kingfisher's What Moves the Dead the other day.

To be honest, I only made it to the end of this book because it was so short. It was only five hours long to listen, and therefore, I doggedly insisted on finishing it even though it was boring the crap out of me. 

It was a send up of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." It was written to be a gothic-style story, and just didn't interest me in the least. I have to admit that this kind of stuff doesn't excite me. As much as Poe is a great point in literary history, I don't read him. His stuff doesn't keep me awake. So, this story, made to be similar to him, didn't do any better. 

I should have given up, but stubbornly, I pushed to the end. I can say I read it, but I don't know who else I'll say it to, because I don't really care to talk about it. There's a sequel to this book called What Feasts at Night, and I had it on hold as well, but I canceled that.

I read T. Kingfisher because Rish Outfield recommended her books on the Outcast. It was worth a shot, but I guess we don't have the same tastes when it comes to T. Kingfisher. There's nothing wrong with that. I suppose I'll move on, and see if I can find something I enjoy more to read.

I've been having bad luck with finding interesting books recently, so I hope things can get better. We'll see when I'm back with another report.

Eleventh Album?

I published a story years ago called "The Tenth Album." It was about a guy coming from an alternate universe to our universe, and coincidentally walking into our main character's record store and discovers that in our universe Van Halen didn't die in a plane crash, but in fact made another album called Balance that he'd never heard before.

The story was on The Dunesteef podcast, but somehow, it is the only story that isn't on the Dunesteef Podcast channel on YouTube. I don't even have a copy of it either. It's just straight up gone. Pretty sad.

The characters in the story were based on me and my childhood friend, Jeff. We were both very into Van Halen in high school. Interestingly enough, earlier this year, I was texting with him about Sammy Hagar's new tour. Sammy was going out with Michael Anthony, Joe Satriani, and Jason Bonham, and they were going to put a particular emphasis on playing the songs from his time in Van Halen as a sort of tribute to our dearly departed Eddie Van Halen.

My friend got all excited about it and offered to fly out to Houston to go to the show with me. I was totally stoked about that. Sadly, of all the concerts I've been to in my life, Van Halen was never one of them. I never had money when the time was right. Now Eddie's gone, and with him any chance of an actual Van Halen concert, but this Sammy Hagar show sounded like it would be the closest thing to that possible.

We got tickets, my friend flew out, and the concert was the other day. We had a great time and enjoyed the heck out of ourselves listening to all of those songs from our teenage years. I did get one video of a song from the show. Check it out:

It wasn't quite Van Halen, but Joe Satriani is about as good of a replacement for Eddie as you can get. It was nice to get the chance for once.

Now, David Lee Roth needs to get together with Steve Vai and do a Best of All Worlds concert doing all his songs from his Van Halen era. I'd go to that.

Working On The Goals

The last time I talked about how my break was over and it was time to get back to work on my goals, I mentioned that I'd written a bunch of them out, but needed to go through and plan them so that they weren't just pie-in-the-sky ideas. Most of the goals were big ones like "get all my stuff published on audio". That's the overarching goal, but to achieve it, I needed to break it down into smaller chunks. So, I sat down and started working on that.

I figured I'd share that with you here, and if you have any suggestions or comments, I'd love to hear them. Maybe I could change things according to your suggestions if they seem better than my own plan (which probably couldn't be too hard. I'm not really a planner. This whole thing is kind of new to me).

Goal 1:

Publish everything by Oct 2025:

Sep: Black Angel
Sep: Digital Wizards
Sep: Pre-owned
Oct: Angels and Wizards Collection
Oct: Sunny and Gray 1
Nov: Sunny and Gray 2
Dec: The Gauntlet
Jan: A Fire in the Center of a Million Universes
Feb: Caught Up In Christmas
Mar: Irresistible Invader
Apr: Lazerfist

From what I understand, the most important thing for an author is to have a bunch of things for people to buy. That way, if they read one of your books and like it, they can then go to your catalog and buy a second one. Then a third, and so on. So, goal one is to get all of my stuff published this year. I put Oct 2025 as the finish line, but scheduled everything to come sooner. I think I can probably hit those numbers, but I may be wildly off. I don't know. Some of the books are basically ready to go, others will need some rewriting before they are ready. So, we'll see how feasible this time line is. Getting all the formats, from eBook to paperback to hardcover might be a little much in that time frame.

Goal 2:

Do Audio for everything by Dec 31, 2025

Sep-Oct: Three Vampire Weekend
Nov-Dec: Angels and Wizards
Jan-Feb: Sunny and Gray 1
Mar-Apr: Sunny and Gray 2
May-Jun: The Gauntlet
Jul-Aug: A Fire in the Center of a Million Universes
Sep-Oct: Caught Up In Christmas
Nov-Dec: Irresistible Invader
Jan-Feb: Lazerfist

This is a sort of extension of the last goal. I want to publish everything. Doing the print versions is one thing, but doing the audio is very much another thing. It involves a whole different work pattern, so I made it it's own goal. Not only that, but it's probably going to take longer than just creating the eBooks and paperbacks, etc.

I suspect that I'm going to have to make a calendar with the hours of the day assigned out to what task I will be working on. Every Tuesday at 8:30 AM, I'll record for an hour, and then at 9:30 AM I'll work on the print book, then at 10:30 AM I'll write or something like that. That's the next step in my planning. Once I've got these goals completely hammered out, I have to take my free time and piece meal it out toward achieving the goals.

Goal 3:

Write Daily

This is kind of a two part thing. First of all, I'm going to switch over from measuring my year in birthday to birthday years to regular calendar years. No more of the October to October reckoning. It's goofy and confusing. I'm the only one who can follow along. I'll stop that now and switch to regular calendar years. So, my writing goal for this birthday to birthday year was 304,475. I hit that back in June. I'm beyond that now. I'm up to 326,447 on year now. And, as we continue through to my birthday, that will continue to increase. If I get about 30,000 words per month, then it will be somewhere around 380,000 in the end.

My word count for 2024 so far is 261,488. I want to outdo my birthday to birthday year's word count with my 2024 word count. I can't make a concrete goal, though, because the birthday to birthday year isn't over yet. I've got four months left in the year in 2024 instead of just two in the birthday to birthday year...but two of the months are the same months as the birthday to birthday year gets, so the only real difference is November and December.

So, as I said, I suspect that my birthday to birthday year will be 380,000 words. Meaning that I have to eclipse that with my calendar year goal. I'm going to shoot for around 40,000 words per month in November and December. If I mange that, I should be right around 400,000 words for 2024.

Then my next goal is to beat that total in 2025.

So, let me list them out:

Birthday to birthday year goal of 380,000
2024 goal of 400,000
2025 goal of 400,000+

I'll come back and make more specific numbers for the goal once I find out how October finishes out.

How do I accomplish these lofty goals? Well, I made a little word per day chart of what I will be shooting for over the next year and change. Here's what I've got:

Oct: Write 1,000 daily
Nov: Write 1,000 daily
Dec: Write 1,250 daily
Jan: Write 1,250 daily
Feb: Write 1,500 daily
Mar: Write 1,500 daily
Apr: Write 1,750 daily
May: Write 1,750 daily
Jun: Write 2,000 daily
Jul: Write 2,000 daily
Aug: Write 2,000 daily
Sep: Write 2,000 daily
Oct: Write 2,000 daily
Nov: Write 2,000 daily
Dec: Write 2,000 daily

That's a pretty intense thing to be shooting for, really. I've almost never written 2,000 words in a day. I've done it maybe five times ever. I want to get to that level, however, and it seems like the best way is to build up with a slow increase every month until I'm there. Hopefully, it'll be kind of like weight lifting. You lift ten pounds every day, and in a while, that seems easy, so you take it up to fifteen...and so on and so on until you're lifting more than a hundred pounds.

Those are all of the very specific goals, I think. The rest are more one time things. Here are a few of those:

Construct a website for BD Anklevich with a store to buy eBooks, signed paper books, etc.
Get an email list going on the website and start a monthly newsletter.
Do some advertising with the money that I make from the podcast and the sales of books.
Get a group of first readers.
Plug myself on the podcast monthly, and ask for reviews as well.
Get the podcast on all the big podcast platforms to increase the audience
Republish the old Dunesteef episodes with my stories on the Anklecast

And maybe there should be others. I was thinking of trying to hit up Abbie Hilton and ask her what she thought I ought to work on as I continue trying to build this stuff up. What should a beginning writer be putting his effort into? What will be worth my time and what is a waste of time?

Many of those goals there involve me figuring out just what the best way to do things is. How do I make my website? What email service to I use for my mailing list? How do I get my podcast listed on Spotify? How do I get it on Google Podcasts...or whatever they're called now? Things I've got to investigate and work out. That will be the process to achieving those goals. I don't even know what they are yet, so I can't make itemized to-do lists with those goals. But I will set aside time to work toward them as well this year.

So, there you have it. That's what I'm working toward by the end of 2025. What do you think? Is there something I missed? Should I add something to the list? Is something that I'm trying to do a complete waste of time? Let me know what you think.

A Monster Miracle

It was only a week or so ago that I talked about finding the Monster Cereals out for sale again at Walmart. In that post, I mentioned how Jada Toys made action figures of the monster characters, and how I would love to buy them. Well, today, my wish finally came true. I walked into Ross and gasped when I saw this on the shelf:

I couldn't believe it. I texted Rish the picture immediately, and as soon as I bought Count Chocula, I headed immediately to the other Ross in hopes that they might have Frankenberry or Boo Berry. Well, of course, they didn't. Someday I'll learn.

I did my traditional picture on the dashboard.

It was amazing that I was able to get him to stand there. The figures are a great sculpt, but I'm going to actually complain about how poseable they are. I think they're too posable. It's really hard to get this guy to stand. Maybe his joints are too wobbly, and that's the reason, not because there are too many of them.

Count Chocula came with an extra head.

I think I like that head better too. I'll probably put it on when I put it on the shelf.

I also saved the box...I don't know if I'll keep that or not, but I think it looks so much like the cereal box that it might be cool to put it on the shelf with the box in the background behind it. What do you think?

I don't know. Maybe it's too much. I mean he's also holding a box of Count Chocula in his hand as well. It's like a hall of mirrors of Count Chocula, boxes going off into infinity. Also, without the box, it will fit in a much smaller space. So, we'll see.

I'll be hitting up all the Rosses I can over the next while. Hopefully, I'll get the other two monsters. I can dream, can't I?

Lion Diet Carnivore & Alternate Day Fasting | Spinning Wheels, But Not Failing | Week 66 Roundup

I'm doing lion diet right now, but how is that going? Well, do lions eat cheese? If so, then I'm fine. Otherwise, I might be struggling a little bit. Does it completely derail me? Or do I get there anyway?

R2-SHW

I got a new droid the other day.

I saw it on Amazon for a much lower price than they've been asking recently. It used to be $25 if you wanted this droid. I guess nobody was buying, though. When I looked the other day, it was at $11.70. That's not an amazing price, and for most Star Wars guys, I'd still pass, but I want more and more droids. As many droids as I can get. So, I jumped at the chance to get this new different droid for what amounts to a reasonable price.

He's a little unusual. I think he needs a black wash to bring out the details, especially in the red parts. I like the different look, though.

He also comes with the camera thing on the top of his head that he can use to look around with in case he gets dumped into a Dagobah swamp or something. That pops out if you push in the center third leg.

You can spin it around to make it look in different directions, but I don't think I like it much, because it's not attached. It will fall out if he turns upside down, or just tips over or something. I suspect that I will lose the thing sooner or later. I think I'll leave the third leg out permanently to try to make sure that doesn't happen.

I gotta stop buying Star Wars guys if they're more than Ross prices. I think I will make an official pledge right now that from here on out, unless there's some very special circumstances, I will not buy Star Wars Vintage Collection figures anywhere other than Ross.

Over Yond3r

They had a couple things at Ross the last time I went. I was a little surprised. They had another Weequay, and I went ahead and grabbed that. They also had this Fortnite figure.

I wanna say that I already have a Yond3r, but I can't find a post about him nor do I want to look through the drawer full of figures that I have for Ankletown Station in search of him. If I do have him, I'm pretty sure it's the gold version.

Now that I look at it, though, I don't think I did get it, so this is probably my only Yond3r. I guess Yond3r is supposed to be DJ, like Marshmello or Daft Punk.

Hence the donkey helmet look on a guy wearing a Michael Jackson looking suitcoat with epaulets and everything.

I like the look of the outfit, but not the head so much. I'll probably dump the head and maybe swap in an alien head like Weequay's or a Nikto or something...or I could just put the alternate head that the figure comes with. I guess Yond3r isn't as enigmatic and mysterious as Daft Punk. You can see him without the headwear.

If nothing else, it's a new head to use on something. I put it on the Weequay and it looked pretty good...although the Fortnite head is more simplisticly detailed than the Star Wars Vintage Collection figures are...so I could do that too.